Liberal Democrat Party manifesto

Introduce free personal care based on the model introduced by the Liberal Democrats in government in Scotland in 2002, so that provision is based on need, not ability to pay. (Pg. 37) 

Establish a cross-party commission to forge a long-term agreement on sustainable funding for social care. (Pg. 37) 

Develop a digital strategy to enable care users to live tech-enabled lives. (Pg. 38) 

Provide truly personalised care that empowers individuals by: 

• Trialling personal health and social care budgets so that individuals are in control of what care they receive.
• Rolling out digital platforms for care users to develop networks, relationships and opportunities, connecting with care workers, friends and family, voluntary groups and more.
• Improving communication standards so carers can support care users to co-produce and monitor care plans.
• Developing a digital strategy for tech-enabled lives. 
• Establishing an Independent Living Taskforce to help people live independently in their own homes. (Pg. 38) 

End the postcode lottery of service provision and provide national, high-quality care for everyone who needs it by: 

• Providing predictable, consistent funding for free personal care.
• Increasing transparency and accountability as to how money is spent through local authorities.
• Creating a National Care Agency to set national minimum standards of care.
• Enabling individuals to transfer their care package so they don’t feel stuck in their current locality due to their care needs. (Pg. 38)

Support people to age well by: 

• Establishing a Commissioner for Older People and Ageing.
• Rolling out active ageing programmes and trips and falls assessments for everyone over the age of 75 to prevent falls, avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and promote healthy ageing.
• Opening frare liaison services so that osteoporosis patients can get the treatment they need and prevent long-term issues and costs. (Pg. 40)
• Refresh the national strategy for loneliness collaboratively with service providers and people who have lived experience of loneliness, to be overseen by a dedicated Minister for Tackling Loneliness. (Pg. 40)

Give unpaid carers a fair deal so they get the support they so desperately need, including paid carer’s leave and a statutory guarantee of regular respite breaks. (Pg. 38) 

Give unpaid carers a fair deal by: 

• Increasing Carer’s Allowance and expanding eligibility for it.
• Introducing a statutory guarantee of regular respite breaks for unpaid carers.
• Introducing paid carer’s leave, building on the entitlement to unpaid leave secured by the Liberal Democrats.
• Making caring a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 and requiring employers to make reasonable adjustments to enable employees with caring responsibilities to provide that care.
• Introducing a Young Carers Pupil Premium as part of an ‘Education Guarantee’ for young carers. (Pgs. 38-40) 

Create a social care workforce plan, establish a Royal College of Care Workers to improve recognition and career progression, and introduce a higher Carer’s Minimum Wage. (Pg. 37) 

Make careers in social care more attractive and value experienced staff to improve retention by: 

• Creating a new Carer’s Minimum Wage, boosting the minimum wage for care workers by £2 an hour, as a starting point for improved pay across the sector.
• Creating clear career pathways, linked to recommended pay scales, which put an end to the undervaluing of skills in the sector.
• Creating a career ladder to allow flexibility to work across the NHS and social care, allowing staff to gain experience in both.
• Creating a Royal College of Care Workers to represent this skilled workforce.
• Expanding the NHS Digital Staff Passport to include the care sector. (Pg. 40)

Recruit more staff to the sector with a social care workforce plan, akin to the NHS England workforce plan, that includes ethical international recruitment. (Pg. 40) 

Give everyone the right to see a GP within seven days, or within 24 hours if they urgently need to, with 8,000 more GPs to deliver on it. (Pg. 30) 

Guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone needing urgent and emergency care, ending DIY dentistry and ‘dental deserts’. (Pg. 30) 

Give everyone the right to see a GP or the most appropriate practice staff member within seven days, or within 24 hours if they urgently need to, by:  

• Increasing the number of full-time equivalent GPs by 8,000, half by boosting recruitment and half from retaining more experienced GPs.
• Giving everyone 70+ and everyone with long-term health conditions access to a named GP.
• Freeing up GPs’ time by giving more prescribing rights and public health advisory services to qualified pharmacists, nurse practitioners and paramedics.
• Introducing a universal 24/7 GP booking system.
• Removing top-down bureaucracy to let practices hire the staff they need and invest in training.
• Establishing a Strategic Small Surgeries Fund to sustain services in rural and remote areas. (Pg. 30)

Guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone needing urgent and emergency care by: 

• Bringing dentists back to the NHS from the private sector by fixing the broken NHS dental contract and using flexible commissioning to meet patient needs.
• Introducing an emergency scheme to guarantee access to free NHS dental check-ups for those already eligible: children, new mothers, those who are pregnant and those on low incomes.
• Guaranteeing appointments for all those who need a dental check before commencing surgery, chemotherapy or transplant. (Pg. 32) 

Take action to prevent tooth decay by:  

• Providing supervised toothbrushing training for children in nurseries and schools.
• Scrapping VAT on children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste. (Pg. 32) 

Improve early access to mental health services by establishing mental health hubs for young people in every community and introducing regular mental health check-ups at key points in people’s lives when they are most vulnerable to mental ill-health. (Pg. 30) 

Improve early access to mental health services by:  

• Opening walk-in hubs for children and young people in every community.
• Offering regular mental health check-ups at key points in people’s lives when they are most vulnerable to mental ill-health.
• Putting a dedicated, qualified mental health professional in every school.
• Ending out-of-area mental health placements by increasing capacity and coordination between services, so that no one is treated far from home.
• Extending young people’s mental health services up to the age of 25 to end the drop-off experienced by young people transitioning to adult services.
• Increasing access to clinically effective talking therapies.
• Taking an evidence-led approach to preventing and treating eating disorders, and challenging damaging stigma about weight.
• Making prescriptions for people with chronic mental health conditions free on the NHS, as part of our commitment to review the entire schedule of exemptions for prescription charges.
• Transforming perinatal mental health support for those who are pregnant, new mothers and those who have experienced miscarriage or stillbirth.
• Tackling stigma through continued support for public education including Time to Talk.
• Cutting suicide rates with a focus on community suicide prevention services and improving prevention training for frontline NHS staff.
• Recognising the relationship between mental health and debt, and providing better signposting between talking therapies and debt advice.
• Ending inappropriate and costly inpatient placements for people with learning disabilities and autism.
• Modernising the Mental Health Act to strengthen people’s rights, give them more choice and control over their treatment and prevent inappropriate detentions.
• Creating a statutory, independent Mental Health Commissioner to represent patients, their families and carers.
• Widening the current safety investigation into mental health hospitals to look at the whole patient experience, including ward design and treatment options. (Pgs. 32-33) 

Help people to spend five more years of their life in good health by investing in public health. (Pg. 30) 

Increasing the Public Health Grant, with a proportion of the extra funding set aside for those experiencing the worst health inequalities to co-produce plans for their communities. (Pg. 33) 

Introducing regulations to halt the dangerous use of vapes by children while recognising their role in smoking cessation for adults, and banning the sale of single-use vapes. (Pg. 34) 

Expanding social prescribing and investing in community projects that bring people together to combat loneliness. (Pg. 34) 

Introducing a new levy on tobacco company profits to help fund healthcare and smoking cessation services. (Pg. 34) 

Protecting children from exposure to junk food by supporting local authorities to restrict outdoor advertising and restricting TV advertising to post-watershed. (Pg. 34) 

Tackling air pollution and poor air quality in public buildings with a Clean Air Act, as set out in chapter 12. (Pg. 34) 

Support children in kinship care and their family carers by: 

• Introducing a statutory definition of kinship care.
• Building on the existing pilot to develop a weekly allowance for all kinship carers. (Pg. 40)

Make care experience a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 to strengthen the rights of people who are in or have been in care. (Pg. 40) 

Appoint a Cabinet Minister for Children and Young People. (Pg.47) 

Incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law. (Pg.48) 

Setting up an independent advocacy body for children’s safety online. (Pg.48) 

Addressing the underfunding and neglect of children’s mental health services, youth services and youth justice services. (Pg.48) 

In the longer term, when the public finances allow, our ambition is to give all families (including self-employed parents, adoptive parents and kinship carers):  

• Six weeks of use-it-or-lose-it leave for each parent, paid at 90 per cent of earnings.
• 46 weeks of parental leave to share between themselves as they choose, paid at double the current statutory rate. (Pg. 49)

Put a dedicated, qualified mental health professional in every primary and secondary school, making sure all children and parents have someone they can turn to for help, funded by increasing the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants. (Pg. 41) 

Increase school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year and end the scandal of crumbling school and college buildings by investing in new buildings and clearing the backlog of repairs. (Pg. 41) 

Invest in high-quality early years education and close the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged three and four an extra five free hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year. (Pg. 41) 

When the public finances allow, give disadvantaged two-year-olds an extra five free hours of early years education a week, as another step towards a universal, full-time entitlement for all two- to four-year-olds. (Pg. 44) 

Tackle persistent absence by setting up a register of children who are not in school, and working to understand and remove underlying barriers to attendance. (Pg. 44) 

Giving local authorities extra funding to reduce the amount that schools pay towards the cost of a child’s Education, Health and Care Plan. (Pg. 44) 

Establishing a new National Body for SEND to fund support for children with very high needs. (Pg. 44) 

Give local authorities with responsibility for education the powers and resources to act as Strategic Education Authorities for their area, including responsibility for places planning, exclusions, administering admissions including in-year admissions, and SEND functions. (Pg. 44) 

Redirect capital funding for unnecessary new free schools to help clear the backlog of school repairs. (Pg. 44) 

Reform Ofsted inspections and end single-word judgements so that parents get a clear picture of the true strengths and weaknesses of each school, and schools get the guidance and support they need to improve. (Pg. 44) 

Support the education of children in care, extend Pupil Premium Plus funding to children in kinship care, and guarantee any child taken into care a school place within three weeks, if required to move schools. (Pg.45) 

Increasing building of new homes to 380,000 a year across the UK, including 150,000 social homes a year, through new garden cities and community-led development of cities and towns. (Pg. 71) 

Delivering a fair deal for renters by immediately banning no-fault evictions, making three-year tenancies the default, and creating a national register of licensed landlords. (Pg. 71) 

Giving local authorities, including National Park Authorities, the powers to  

End Right to Buy in their areas. (Pg. 71) 

Ending rough sleeping within the next Parliament and immediately scrapping the archaic Vagrancy Act. (Pg. 71) 

Abolishing residential leaseholds and capping ground rents to a nominal fee, so that everyone has control over their property. (Pg. 71) 

Build the homes people desperately need, with meaningful community engagement, by: 

• Expanding Neighbourhood Planning across England.
• Building ten new garden cities.
• Allowing councils to buy land for housing based on current use value rather than on a hope-value basis by reforming the Land Compensation Act 1961.
• Properly funding local planning departments to improve planning outcomes and ensure housing is not built in areas of high flood risk without adequate mitigation, by allowing local authorities to set their own fees.
• Encouraging the use of rural exception sites to expand rural housing.
• Trialling Community Land Auctions to ensure that local communities receive a fair share of the benefits of new development in their areas and to help fund vital local services.
• Encouraging development of existing brownfield sites with financial incentives and ensuring that affordable and social housing is included in these projects.
• Introducing ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ planning permission for developers who refuse to build.
• Putting the construction sector on a sustainable footing by investing in skills, training and new technologies such as modern methods of construction. (Pg. 72)
• Ensure that all development has appropriate infrastructure, services and amenities in place, integrating infrastructure and public service delivery into the planning process. (Pg. 72)
• Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade  programme, and ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon, as set out in chapter 5. (Pg. 72)
• Remove dangerous cladding from all buildings, while ensuring that leaseholders do not have to pay a penny towards it. (Pg. 72)
• Help people who cannot afford a deposit to own their own homes by introducing a new Rent to Own model for social housing where rent payments give tenants an increasing stake in the property, owning it outright after 30 years. (Pg. 72) 

Give local authorities new powers to control second homes and short-term lets in their areas by:  

• Allowing them to increase council tax by up to 500 per cent where homes are being bought as second homes, with a stamp duty surcharge on overseas residents purchasing such properties.
• Creating a new planning class for these properties. (Pg. 76) 

Make planning work for our natural environment and ensure that developers pay their fair share by:  

• Ensuring new developments result in significant net gain for biodiversity, with up to a 100 per cent net gain for large developments.
• Introducing a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance competing demands on our land and oceans.
• Empowering Local Nature Recovery Strategies to identify a new Wild Belt for nature’s recovery. (Pg. 63)  

Invest in officers, training and technology to tackle smuggling, trafficking and modern slavery (Pg. 87) 

Revoke the Illegal Migration Act and provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees (Pg. 87) 

Tackle the asylum backlog by establishing a dedicated unit to improve the speed and quality of asylum decision-making, introducing a service standard of three months for all but the most complex asylum claims to be processed. (Pg. 87) 

Lift the ban on asylum seekers working if they have been waiting for a decision for more than three months, enabling them to support themselves, integrate in their communities and contribute to the economy. (Pg. 88) 

Exempt NHS and care staff from the £1,000-a-year Immigration Skills Charge, and reverse the ban on care workers bringing partners and children. (Pg. 88) 

Increase the ‘move-on’ period for refugees to 60 days, providing vital time for new refugees to prepare for life in the UK while ensuring that other public bodies are not left to pick up the costs of them becoming destitute.  (Pg. 91) 

Establish a firewall to prevent public agencies from sharing personal information with the Home Office for the purposes of immigration enforcement and repeal the immigration exemption in the Data Protection Act. (Pg. 90) 

Provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees by (Pg. 90):  

• Expanding and properly funding the UK Resettlement Scheme.
• Creating new humanitarian travel permits that would allow asylum seekers to travel to the UK safely to proceed with their claims.
• Establishing a new scheme to resettle unaccompanied child refugees from elsewhere in Europe.
• Reuniting unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Europe with family members in the UK.
• Expanding the scope of refugee family reunion, including enabling unaccompanied child refugees in the UK to sponsor close family members to join them.
• Funding community-sponsorship projects for refugees, and rewarding community groups who develop innovative and successful ways of promoting social cohesion.
• Offering asylum to people fleeing the risk of violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identification.

Develop an industrial strategy that will give businesses certainty and incentivise them to invest in new technologies to grow the economy, create good jobs and tackle the climate crisis. (Pg. 17) 

Boost productivity and empower more people to enter the job market – such as parents, carers and disabled people – by making the most of technology and new ways of working. (Pg. 18) 

Boost small businesses and empower them to create new local jobs, including by abolishing business rates and replacing them with a Commercial Landowner Levy to help our high streets. (Pg. 18) 

Ensure the UK has the highest possible standards of environmental, health, labour and consumer protection, at least matching EU standards. (Pg. 19) 

Create a clear, workable and well-resourced cross-sectoral regulatory framework for artificial intelligence that: 

• Promotes innovation while creating certainty for AI users, developers and investors.
• Establishes transparency and accountability for AI systems in the public sector.
• Ensures the use of personal data and AI is unbiased, transparent and accurate, and respects the privacy of innocent people. (Pg. 19) 

Negotiate the UK’s participation in the Trade and Technology Council with the US and the EU, so we can play a leading role in global AI regulation, and work with international partners in agreeing common standards for AI risk and impact assessment, testing, monitoring and audit. (Pg. 19) 

Cut resource use, waste and pollution by accelerating the transition to a more circular economy that maximises the recovery, reuse, recycling and remanufacturing of products. This will cut costs for consumers and businesses, reduce exposure to volatile commodity prices, protect the environment and create new jobs and enterprises. (Pg. 20) 

Promote a public benefit company model for monopoly utility companies. (Pg. 20) 

Tackle the late payments crisis by requiring all government agencies and contractors and companies with more than 250 employees to sign up to the prompt payment code, making it enforceable. (Pg. 20) 

Establish a powerful new Worker Protection Enforcement Authority unifying responsibilities currently spread across three agencies – including enforcing the minimum wage, tackling modern slavery and protecting agency workers. (Pg. 21) 

Establish an independent review to recommend a genuine living wage across all sectors, with government departments and all other public sector employers taking a leading role in paying it. (Pg. 21) 

Fix the skills and recruitment crisis by investing in education and training, including increasing the availability of apprenticeships and career advice for young people. (Pg. 18) 

Invest in people’s skills by: 

• Replacing the broken apprenticeship levy with a broader and more flexible skills and training levy.
• Boosting the take-up of apprenticeships, including by guaranteeing they are paid at least the National Minimum Wage by scrapping the lower apprentice rate.
• Creating new Lifelong Skills Grants for adults to spend on education and training throughout their lives.
• Developing National Colleges as national centres of expertise for key sectors, such as renewable energy, to deliver the high-level vocational skills that businesses need.
• Identifying and seeking to solve skills gaps, such as the lack of advanced technicians, by expanding higher vocational training like foundation degrees, Higher National Diplomas, Higher National Certificates and Higher Apprenticeships.
• Improving the quality of vocational education, and strengthening careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges. (Pgs. 20-21) 

Create new Lifelong Skills Grants, giving all adults £5,000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives, and aim to increase them to £10,000 in the future when the public finances allow. (Pg. 42) 

Improve the quality of vocational education, including skills for entrepreneurship and self-employment. (Pg. 42) 

Invest in green infrastructure, innovation and skills to boost economic growth and create good jobs and prosperity in every nation and region of the UK, while tackling the climate crisis. (Pg. 12) 

Foster stability, certainty and confidence by managing the public finances responsibly to get the national debt falling as a share of the economy and ensure that day-to-day spending does not exceed the amount raised in taxes, while making the investments our country needs. (Pg. 12) 

Launching an ambitious industrial strategy to incentivise businesses to invest and create good jobs across the UK, as set out in chapter 4. (Pg. 12) 

Continuing to champion investment in the Northern Powerhouse, Western Gateway and Midlands Engine. (Pg. 12) 

Supporting local and regional economic partnerships to coordinate development projects and boost growth in their areas. (Pg. 12) 

Establishing a joint council to oversee the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and other ‘levelling up’ spending, working in partnership with governments, combined authorities and councils across the UK. (Pg. 104) 

Working with the devolved administrations to develop joint policies and partnerships to boost growth across the whole UK. (Pg. 12) 

Ensuring that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business, including in rural and remote communities, as set out in chapter 15. (Pg. 12) 

Increase investment in green infrastructure, including renewable energy and zero-carbon transport, industry and housing, as set out in chapters 4, 5, 14 and 16, and give a clearer zero-carbon remit to the UK Infrastructure Bank. (Pg. 14) 

Expand the British Business Bank to perform a more central role in the economy, to ensure that viable small and medium-sized businesses have access to capital, and enable it to help ‘crowd-in’ private investment, in particular in zero-carbon products and technologies. (Pg. 15) 

Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes, and ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon. (Pg. 23) 

Drive a rooftop solar revolution by expanding incentives for households to install solar panels, including a guaranteed fair price for electricity sold back into the grid. (Pg. 23) 

Invest in renewable power so that 90 per cent of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewables by 2030. (Pg. 24) 

Appoint a Chief Secretary for Sustainability in the Treasury to ensure that the economy is sustainable, resource-efficient and zero-carbon, establish a new Net Zero Delivery Authority to coordinate action across government departments and work with devolved administrations, and hand more powers and resources to local councils for local net zero strategies. (Pg. 24) 

Establish national and local citizens’ assemblies to give people real involvement in the decisions needed to tackle climate change. (Pg. 24) 

Restore the UK’s role as a global leader on climate change, by returning international development spending to 0.7 per cent of national income, with tackling climate change a key priority for development spending. (Pg. 24) 

Creating a Joint Climate Council of the Nations to tackle the climate emergency by helping to foster innovation and encourage collaborative action. (Pg. 102) 

Take the action needed now to achieve net zero by 2045, including: 

• Meeting the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by at least 68 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030.
• Requiring the National Infrastructure Commission to take fully into account the environmental implications of all national infrastructure decisions.
• Putting tackling climate change at the heart of a new industrial strategy.
• Investing in education and training to equip people with the skills needed for the low-carbon economy of the future.
• Ensuring that nature-based solutions, including tree planting, form a critical part of the UK’s strategy to tackle climate change.
• Putting our farming and food system on an environmentally sustainable footing.
• Making it cheaper and easier to switch to electric vehicles, restoring the requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zero-emission, investing in active travel and public transport, electrifying Britain’s railways, and reducing the climate impact of flying.
• Coordinating action across the UK by creating a Joint Climate Council of the Nations. (Pg. 24) 

Cut energy bills and emissions, and end fuel poverty, by:  

• Launching an emergency Home Energy Upgrade programme, with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households and a central role for local authorities in delivering this programme.
• Providing incentives for installing heat pumps that cover the real costs.
• Immediately requiring all new homes and non-domestic buildings to be built to a zero-carbon standard, including being fitted with solar panels, and progressively increasing standards as technology improves.
• Reintroducing requirements for landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties to EPC C or above by 2028.
• Introducing a new subsidised Energy-Saving Homes scheme, with pilots to find the most effective combination of tax incentives, loans and grants, together with advice and support.
• Introducing a social tariff for the most vulnerable to provide targeted energy discounts for vulnerable households.
• Helping people with the cost of living and their energy bills by implementing a proper, one-off windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas producers and traders.
• Decoupling electricity prices from the wholesale gas price.
• Eliminating unfair regional differences in domestic energy bills. (Pg. 26) 

Accelerate the deployment of renewable power and deliver energy security by:  

• Removing unnecessary restrictions on new solar and wind power, and supporting investment and innovation in tidal and wave power in particular.
• Maintaining the ban on fracking and introducing a ban on new coal mines.
• Building the grid infrastructure required, facilitated by a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework.
• Investing in energy storage, including green hydrogen, pumped storage and battery capability.
• Building more electricity interconnectors between the UK and other countries to guarantee security of supply, located carefully to avoid disruption to local communities and minimise environmental damage. (Pgs. 26-27) 

Support the expansion of community and decentralised energy, including: 

• Empowering local authorities to develop local renewable electricity generation and storage strategies.
• Giving small low-carbon generators the right to export their electricity to an existing electricity supplier on fair terms.
• Requiring large energy suppliers to work with community schemes to sell the power they generate to local customers.
• Reducing access costs for grid connections.
• Reforming the energy network to permit local energy grids.
• Guaranteeing that community benefit funds receive a fair share of the wealth generated by local renewables infrastructure. (Pg. 27) 

Hold businesses to account for their role in tackling climate change by:  

• Introducing a general duty of care for the environment.
• Requiring all large companies listed on UK stock exchanges to set targets consistent with achieving the net zero goal, and to report on their progress.
• Regulating financial services to encourage climate-friendly investments, including requiring pension funds and managers to show that their portfolio investments are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and creating new powers for regulators to act if banks and other investors are not managing climate risks properly. (Pgs. 27-28) 

Support British industry to cut emissions by: 

• Setting out a clear and stable roadmap to net zero, repairing the damage done by Conservative U-turns and giving businesses the confidence to invest.
• Expanding the market for climate-friendly products and services with steadily higher criteria in public procurement policy.
• Implementing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for high-emission products, protecting UK businesses from unfair competition.
• Reducing emissions from industrial processes by supporting carbon capture and storage and new low-carbon processes for cement and steel production.
• Providing more advice to companies on cutting emissions, supporting the development of regional industrial clusters for zero-carbon innovation and increasing the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund. (Pg. 28) 

Ensure local authorities have the powers and resources they need to tackle the climate and nature emergencies. (Pg. 75) 

Tackle child poverty by removing the two-child limit and the benefit cap. (Pg. 51) 

Set a target of ending deep poverty within a decade and establish an independent commission to recommend further annual increases in Universal Credit to ensure that support covers life’s essentials, such as food and bills. (Pg. 51)  

Repair the broken benefits safety net by:  

• Reducing the wait for the first payment of Universal Credit from five weeks to five days.
• Scrapping the bedroom tax.
• Replacing the sanctions regime with an incentive-based scheme to help people into work.
• Ending the young parent penalty for under-25s by restoring the full rate of Universal Credit for all parents regardless of age. (Pg. 52) 

Give unpaid carers the support they deserve by increasing Carer’s Allowance and expanding it to more carers and stop pursuing carers for old overpayments of Carer’s Allowance. (Pg. 51)  

Increase Carer’s Allowance and expand eligibility for it by:  

• Raising the amount carers can earn and introducing an earnings taper to end the unfair cliff-edge.
• Reducing the number of hours’ care per week required.
• Extending it to carers in full-time education.
• Reverse the Conservatives’ cut to support payments for parents whose partners have died. (Pg. 52) 

Establish an Independent Living Taskforce to help people live independently in their own homes, with more choice and control over their lives. (Pg. 52)  

Make the benefits system work better for disabled people by:  

• Giving disabled people and organisations representing them a stronger voice in the design of benefits policies and processes.
• Bringing Work Capability Assessments in-house.
• Reforming Personal Independence Payment assessments to make the process more transparent and stop unnecessary reassessments and end the use of informal assessments. (Pg. 52) 

Fix the broken Statutory Sick Pay system by: 

• Making it available to the more than one million workers earning less than £123 a week, most of whom are women.
• Aligning the rate with the National Minimum Wage.
• Making payments available from the first day of missing work rather than the fourth. (Pg. 22)

Supporting small employers with Statutory Sick Pay costs, consulting with them on the best way to do this. (Pg. 22) 

Restoring proper community policing, where officers are visible, trusted and focused on preventing and solving crimes – especially rape and other violent crime. (Pg. 55) 

Creating a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by the police and properly investigated. (Pg. 55) 

Investing in the criminal justice system to tackle the backlog of court cases and ensure swift justice. (Pg. 55) 

Ensuring survivors of violence against women and girls are properly supported in the criminal justice process, including through mandatory training for police and prosecutors in understanding the impact of trauma on survivors. (Pg. 56) 

Help rebuild public trust in policing by:  

• Scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners and replacing them with local Police Boards made up of councillors and representatives from relevant local groups, while investing the savings in frontline policing.
• Requiring the Home Secretary, the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to draw up an urgent plan to implement the recommendations of the Baroness Casey Review and tackle sexism, racism and homophobia, while encouraging other police forces to do so where appropriate. (Pg. 56) 

Work with communities to tackle the alarming rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia. (Pg. 76) 

End the sewage scandal by transforming water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a tough new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps. (Pg. 61) 

Tackle the national scandal of sewage-polluted rivers, waterways and beaches, and make water companies work for people by: 

• Introducing a Sewage Tax on water company profits.
• Setting legally binding targets to prevent sewage dumping into bathing waters and highly sensitive nature sites by 2030.
• Strengthening the powers of local authorities to monitor the health of our rivers, lakes and coastlines, restore our natural environment and tackle climate change.
• Giving local environmental groups a place on water companies’ boards.
• Introducing a single social tariff for water bills to help eliminate water poverty within the next Parliament.
• Implementing Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act to require sustainable drainage systems in new developments.
• Mandating all water companies to publish accessible real-time data on any sewage they dump. (Pg. 62)
• Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of our natural environment and ‘double nature’ by 2050: doubling the size of the Protected Area Network, doubling the area of most important wildlife habitats, doubling the abundance of species and doubling woodland cover by 2050. (Pg. 61) 

Plant at least 60 million trees a year, helping to restore woodland habitats, increase the use of sustainable wood in construction, and reach net zero. (Pg. 62) 

Pass a Clean Air Act, based on World Health Organization guidelines, enforced by a new Air Quality Agency. (Pg. 62) 

Strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection and provide more funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect our environment and enforce environmental laws. (Pg. 62) 

Ensure everyone has access to a healthy natural environment, regardless of where they live, by:  

• Significantly increasing the amount of accessible green space, including protecting up to a million acres, completing the coastal path, exploring a ‘right to roam’ for waterways and creating a new designation of National Nature Parks.
• Passing a new Environmental Rights Act, recognising everyone’s human right to a healthy environment and guaranteeing access to environmental justice.
• Making sure that the UK has the highest environmental standards in the world.

• Working together with our European neighbours to tackle the nature crisis, including applying to join the European Environment Agency. (Pg. 63)

Create a nature-positive economy, tackle plastic pollution and waste, and get Britain recycling by:  

• Introducing a deposit return scheme for food and drink bottles and containers, working with the devolved administrations to ensure consistency across the UK, learning the lessons from the difficulties with the Scottish scheme. (Pg. 63)

End the top-down reorganisation of councils and the imposition of elected mayors on communities who do not want them. (Pg. 76) 

Decentralise decision-making from Whitehall and Westminster by inviting local areas to take control of the services that matter to them most. (Pg. 76) 

Appoint a cross-departmental Minister for Rural Communities, to make sure that rural voices are heard across government. (Pg. 76) 

Enhance powers over community assets to help local authorities protect pubs, community farms, and other vital infrastructure. (Pg. 76) 

Securing cooperation and agreement through common frameworks and a new dispute resolution process, sharing power, resolving differences maturely between administrations and delivering better governance. (Pg. 102) 

Improving joint ministerial work on new cross-cutting policies, such as the UK industrial strategy. (Pg. 102) 

Strengthen local democracy, including introducing proportional representation for electing councillors and MPs in England and scrapping the voter ID scheme (Pg. 76) 

Giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in UK general elections and referendums, and local elections in England. (Pg. 100) 

Extending the right to full participation in civic life, including the ability to stand for office or vote in UK referendums, local elections and general elections, to all EU citizens with settled status, and to anyone else who has lived in the UK for at least five years and has the right to stay permanently. (Pg. 100) 

Introducing a legal requirement for local authorities to inform citizens of the steps they must take to be successfully registered with far greater efforts in particular to register underrepresented groups, and ensuring that the UK has an automatic system of inclusion in elections. (Pg.100) 

Establishing national and local citizens’ assemblies to ensure that the public are fully engaged in finding solutions to the greatest challenges we face. (Pg. 100) 

Make elections fairer and more transparent, and raise the quality of political debate, by introducing public awareness campaigns about emerging threats and misinformation campaigns online. (Pg. 102) 

Pushing for a global convention or treaty to combat disinformation and electoral interference, supplemented by an annual conference and Global Counter-Disinformation Fund, to safeguard and promote democracy at home as well as abroad. (Pg. 100) 

Implement a comprehensive Race Equality Strategy, including scrapping the voter ID scheme and requiring political parties to publish candidate diversity data. (Pg. 96) 

Invest in leisure centres, swimming pools and other grassroots facilities, and support community sports clubs. (Pg. 77) 

Boost participation in sports and physical activity by investing in leisure centres, swimming pools and other grassroots facilities and supporting community sports clubs. (Pg. 83) 

Establish creative enterprise zones to grow and regenerate the cultural output of areas across the UK. (Pg. 84) 

Upgrade the status of tourism in government with a dedicated Minister of State for Tourism and Hospitality. (Pg. 84) 

Maintain free access to national museums and galleries. (Pg. 84) 

Boost funding for cultural and creative projects by applying to participate fully in Creative Europe. (Pg. 84) 

Protect sports and arts funding via the National Lottery. (Pg. 84) 

Combat the harms caused by problem gambling by (Pg. 85): 

• Introducing the planned compulsory levy on gambling companies to fund research, prevention and treatment.
• Restricting gambling advertising.
• Establishing a Gambling Ombudsman to redress wrongs.
• Implementing effective affordability checks.
• Taking tough action against black market gambling. 

Give local authorities the powers they need to restore bus routes and add new ones where there is local need, especially in rural areas, as set out in chapter 16. (Pg. 77) 

Help motorists in rural areas who face higher fuel costs by expanding Rural Fuel Duty Relief. (Pg. 77) 

Make it cheaper and easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by rapidly rolling out far more charging points, reintroducing the plug-in car grant, and restoring the requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zero-emission. (Pg. 79) 

Freeze rail fares and simplify ticketing on public transport to ensure regular users are paying fair and affordable prices. (Pg. 79) 

Significantly extend the electrification of Britain’s rail network, improve stations, greatly improve disabled access, reopen smaller stations and deliver Northern Powerhouse rail. (Pg. 79) 

Boost bus services by giving local authorities more powers to franchise services and simplifying funding, so that bus routes can be restored or new routes added where there is local need, especially in rural areas. (Pg. 79) 

Transform how people travel by creating new cycling and walking networks with a new nationwide active travel strategy. (Pg. 80) 

Give more of the roads budget to local councils to maintain existing roads, pavements and cycleways, including repairing potholes. (Pg. 80) 

Make it easy and cheap to charge electric vehicles by:  

• Rolling out far more charging points, including residential on-street points and ultra-fast chargers at service stations.
• Supporting new charging points with an upgraded National Grid and a stepchange in local grid capacity.
• Cutting VAT on public charging to 5 per cent.
• Requiring all charging points to be accessible with a bank card. (Pg. 80)

Boost bus services by:  

• Supporting rural bus services and encouraging alternatives to conventional bus services where they are not viable, such as on-demand services.
• Maintaining the £2 cap on bus fares while fares are reviewed.
• Replacing multiple funding streams with one integrated fund for local authorities for expanding bus services and switching to zero-emission vehicles.
• Extending current programmes to encourage local authorities and bus operators to switch entirely to zero-emission buses. (Pg. 80)

Working with local authorities to implement light rail schemes for trams and tram-trains where these are appropriate solutions to public transport requirements. (Pg. 81) 

Make public transport more affordable for young people by:  

• Extending half-fares on buses, trams and trains to 18-year-olds.
• Working with operators to introduce a ‘Young Person’s Buscard’, similar to the Young Person’s Railcard, giving 19- to 25-year-olds a third off bus and tram fares. (Pg. 81)

Devolve greater decision-making powers and resources to local authorities in England to design public transport infrastructure around community needs, including powers to introduce network-wide ticketing as in London. (Pg. 82) 

Give everyone a new right to flexible working and every disabled person the right to work from home if they want to, unless there are significant business reasons why it is not possible. (Pg. 94) 

Upholding the Equality Act 2010, and making caring and care experience protected characteristics as set out in chapter 7. 

Fully implementing the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. 

Ensuring sustainable funding for services to support survivors of domestic abuse, with a particular focus on community-based and specialist ‘by and for’ services (Pg. 95). 

Improve diversity in the workplace and public life by:  

• Requiring large employers to monitor and publish data on gender, ethnicity, disability, and LGBT+ employment levels, pay gaps and progression, and publish five-year aspirational diversity targets.
• Extending the use of name-blind recruitment processes in the public sector and encouraging their use in the private sector.
• Improving diversity in public appointments by setting ambitious targets and requiring progress reports to Parliament with explanations when targets are not met. (Pg. 95)
• Providing additional support and advice to employers on neurodiversity in the workplace, and developing a cross-government strategy to tackle all aspects of discrimination faced by neurodiverse children and adults. (Pg. 96)

Establishing a new right to affordable, reasonable legal assistance, and making the Legal Aid system simpler, fairer and more generous. (Pg. 94) 

Introducing a Digital Bill of Rights to protect everyone’s rights online, including the rights to privacy, free expression, and participation without being subjected to harassment and abuse. (Pg. 94) 

Upholding the Equality Act 2010, and making caring and care experience protected characteristics (Pg. 94) 

Fully implementing the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. (Pg. 94) 

Ensuring sustainable funding for services to support survivors of domestic abuse, with a particular focus on community-based and specialist ‘by and for’ services (Pg. 95) 

• Requiring all police forces to adopt ambitious targets for improving the diversity of their workforce.

Introduce a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition. (Pg. 66) 

Accelerate the rollout of the new Environmental Land Management schemes, properly funding it with an extra £1 billion a year to support profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming. (Pg. 66) 

Give consumers confidence in the food they eat by providing local authorities with greater powers and resources to inspect and monitor food production. (Pg. 68) 

Passing a comprehensive new Animal Welfare Bill to ensure the highest standards possible. (Pg. 69)